ON A RECENT episode of The Codcast, Pioneer Institute executive director Jim Stergios argued that “the T’s spending is off the rails” and called for reinstating a Fiscal and Management Control Board at the MBTA. That proposal gets history exactly backward.
The best way to deliver safe, reliable, and efficient public transportation in Greater Boston is through sustained investment, stable leadership, and strong—but appropriately scaled—oversight. Today, all three are in place, and they are producing real, measurable results. Reinstating a control board would undermine that progress, not strengthen it.
To be clear, the original FMCB did important work, and its members deserve credit for stepping in during a period of crisis. But calls to bring it back ignore the lessons learned from its tenure—lessons that are especially relevant now, as the MBTA finally emerges from years of underinvestment.
One of the most significant problems with the FMCB was structural. By statute, the board met 36 times a year—or about once every 10 days. This pace pulled senior leadership and staff away from the core work of operating, maintaining, and improving the system, and toward preparing constant presentations for board consumption.
The FMCB’s own Safety Review Panel report acknowledged this flaw in 2019. “Also obvious is that the mandate requiring the FMCB to have such frequent meetings has had a detrimental effect on the organization,” it said. “It’s unquestionable that this mandate is causing staff to ‘take their eye off the ball’ and contributes to safety not getting the time and attention it requires.”
That warning should not be forgotten.
Claims that the MBTA’s current spending levels are reckless are also deeply misleading. Much of today’s investment is a direct response to years of deferred maintenance and staffing shortages—conditions that worsened under an austerity-driven approach.
The FY23 state budget, signed by Gov. Charlie Baker in 2022, created the MBTA Safety and Workforce Reserve and funded it with $266.3 million to address findings from the Federal Transit Administration’s Safety Management Inspection. At the time, the system was in crisis. Nearly 10 percent of subway track was under speed restrictions. Five runaway train incidents had occurred in just 18 months. More than one-fifth of dispatcher positions on the Red, Orange, and Blue lines were vacant.
Is this the MBTA we want to return to?
Since then, discretionary state investment in the MBTA has increased from $127 million in FY22 to $665 million in FY26. Those investments have paid off. Chronic slow zones on the subway have been eliminated. Safety and inspection departments have been expanded. The MBTA has launched long-overdue initiatives to modernize its signal systems, increase core capacity, build new bus facilities for battery-electric fleets, and advance electrification of the Fairmount Line on the commuter rail as a proof point for regional rail.
This progress is not accidental—it is the result of sustained funding paired with stable, competent leadership.
Which raises an obvious question: What public value would be created by forcing General Manager Phil Eng to report to a new control board every 10 days?
The current governance structure already provides robust oversight without micromanagement. The MBTA board allows leadership to operate while maintaining accountability. The MBTA Advisory Board conducts annual reviews of both operating and capital budgets and ensures municipal concerns are represented at the highest level. A reinvigorated, and funded Department of Public Utilities is also actively engaged. Oversight is not lacking.
What would be dangerous is a return to the austerity mindset that flourished under the control board era. That approach did not produce efficiency; it produced understaffing, deferred maintenance, fare increases, and a less safe system.
The Federal Transit Administration put it plainly in its 2022 inspection report:
“MBTA’s staffing levels are not commensurate with the demand for human resources required to carry out current rail transit operations and maintenance in addition to expanding capital program activities,” it said.
From 2015 to 2022, constrained operating budgets hollowed out the workforce and eroded safety at the T. Since 2023, reinvestment in staffing, maintenance, and in-house expertise has reversed that trajectory. The MBTA today is safer, more resilient, and more reliable than it was just a few years ago.
As the MBTA prepares its FY27 operating budget, its leadership and board must continue to strike a careful balance between fiscal discipline and necessary investment. But the lesson of recent history is clear: stable leadership and sustained funding make the MBTA stronger. Austerity and perpetual crisis governance do not.
The T is in a better place today than it was in 2021 or 2022. Massachusetts should not go back.
Brian Kane is executive director of the MBTA Advisory Board. Isabella MacKinnon is the advisory board’s budget and policy analyst.
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